UK lawmakers have rejected British Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit plan by 432 votes to 202 - a majority of 230.
MPs voted on Ms May's Brexit deal on Tuesday (local time), after she shelved plans for a vote in December when it became clear that not enough MPs from her own party or others would back the deal she agreed with Brussels.
After five days of debate in the House, the vote finally came to an end. Local media had been reporting that it was likely Ms May's deal would be rejected by a majority.
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Now that lawmakers have rejected Ms May's Brexit deal, she has three days to return to Parliament with a "Plan B". If that also fails, another proposal has been put forward that would give ministers another three weeks to come up with a plan.
In a last ditch effort to convince rebel lawmakers to back her Brexit deal, Ms May, who survived a confidence vote in her own Conservative Party, warned earlier this week that the UK would be in peril if the deal wasn't agreed on.
Ahead of the confidence vote in December last month, she hinted she might step down on her own accord before the next UK general election, scheduled for 2022.
Ms May tried to reassure MPs from all sides of the House over the controversial Northern Irish "backstop", a fallback plan to avoid any return to physical border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
She said she received new written assurances from the EU, that any border checks would be temporary and, if used, would only last for a short period of time.
But Democratic Unionist Party leader Arlene Foster said the backstop option "was something that we could not accept" and said her party's lawmakers would be voting against the deal, BBC reports.
"It [the backstop] does violence to the union - it separates us from the rest of the United Kingdom in a very, very obvious way," she said, going on to ask Ms May to "get rid" of the option.
In another show of defiance, the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), Ian Blackford, said: "There is no way that the Scottish National Party and the people of Scotland are going to be sitting in that bus as the prime minister drives us off the cliff."
Anti-Brexit politicians have reportedly published proposed legislation to bring about another referendum to ask they public, again, if they want to remain in the EU.
Newshub.
